You can believe what you want and I will believe what I want. Here is a summary of some contrary views from “scientists”.
Criticisms of Chomsky’s theories
Chomsky thus continues to believe that language is “pre-organized” in some way or other within the neuronal structure of the human brain, and that the environment only shapes the contours of this network into a particular language. His approach thus remains radically opposed to that of Skinner or Piaget, for whom language is constructed solely through simple interaction with the environment. This latter, behaviourist model, in which the acquisition of language is nothing but a by-product of general cognitive development based on sensorimotor interaction with the world, would appear to have been abandoned as the result of Chomsky’s theories.
Since Chomsky first advanced these theories, however, evolutionary biologists have undermined them with the proposition that it may be only the brain’s general abilities that are “pre-organized”. These biologists believe that to try to understand language, we must approach it not from the standpoint of syntax, but rather from that of evolution and the biological structures that have resulted from it. According to Philip Lieberman, for example, language is not an instinct encoded in the cortical networks of a “language organ”, but rather a learned skill based on a “functional language system” distributed across numerous cortical and subcortical structures.
Though Lieberman does recognize that human language is by far the most sophisticated form of animal communication, he does not believe that it is a qualitatively different form, as Chomsky claims. Lieberman sees no need to posit a quantum leap in evolution or a specific area of the brain that would have been the seat of this innovation. On the contrary, he says that language can be described as a neurological system composed of several separate functional abilities.
For Lieberman and other authors, such as Terrence Deacon, it is the neural circuits of this system, and not some “language organ”, that constitute a genetically predetermined set that limits the possible characteristics of a language. In other words, these authors believe that our ancestors invented modes of communication that were compatible with the brain’s natural abilities. And the constraints inherent in these natural abilities would then have manifested themselves in the universal structures of language.
Another approach that offers an alternative to Chomsky’s universal grammar is generative semantics, developed by linguist George Lakoff of the University of California at Berkeley. In contrast to Chomsky, for whom syntax is independent of such things as meaning, context, knowledge, and memory, Lakoff shows that semantics, context, and other factors can come into play in the rules that govern syntax. In addition, metaphor, which earlier authors saw as a simple linguistic device, becomes for Lakoff a conceptual construct that is essential and central to the development of thought.
Lastly, even among those authors who embrace Chomsky’s universal grammar, there are various conflicting positions, in particular about how this universal grammar may have emerged. Steven Pinker, for instance, takes an adaptationist position that departs considerably from the exaptation thesis proposed by Chomsky.